I was in a wing-mood yesterday, so I decided to try the new hooters that had opened up near the Sanford mall. I usually like my wings uncoated, but for some odd reason I was in the mood for some breaded wings. So off to hooters we went.
I have no idea when hooters teamed up with a credit card company, but the results are annoying. While I was sitting at the table waiting for one of the waitresses to jiggle over, I spied out document holder on the table. Thinking it was going to show drink specials or desserts, I pulled it out and flipped through it. To my horror it was a credit card application. A pamphlet showing people having all sorts of fun because they have the credit card to pay for it, along with an application you can fill out and stick into any mailbox. I looked around the room and saw that every table held one.
That was bad enough, however when she brought me my beer... the beer coaster had a credit card advertisement on it. I find that to be... I don't know. Rude. Invasive. Beer coasters should either advertise other beers or have witty slogans or jokes on them. Not pictures of credit cards. Welcome to the future.
I finished eating and walked out in annoyance, tugging my hooters balloon angrily.
On the way back to the house I saw something that was a mixture of stupid and sad. A man was on the side of the road, playing a trumpet. He held an 'OPENING SOON' sign, although I am not sure if it was for the Big Boy restaurant or the apartments that had been built next to it. Regardless, he was on the side of the road with the sign playing his little brass trumpet. However, it was around 90 degrees out, and the road was a 45 mph lane not near a stoplight. So he stood there and played merrily to a bunch of cars with windows rolled up, AC blasting as it zips by him at 45 miles per hour. I seriously doubt anyone actually heard him play his horn, except for a few stray goats across the street.
I watched an entire season of 'Robot Chicken' last night. I think I feel a little dumber this morning.
Tomorrow nights I have Horror Nights orientation. It's not bad, just boring. Sit there for four ours and listen to some guy babble. At least you get paid for it.
2026 Update
Dialing the time machine to August 2006, where Ed battles Hooters credit cards and a trumpet man.
Ah, 2006. A simpler time when credit card applications were physical ambushes tucked into tabletop menus, and a man could stand on a 45-mile-an-hour roadside in 90-degree heat playing a trumpet to nobody but goats and rolled-up windows. Now the credit card offers don't even bother with the coaster—they crawl out of your phone like roaches out of a server room, and the only thing tables advertise is a QR code that wants your entire soul before it shows you a dessert menu. Your beer coaster was genuinely supposed to be a tiny billboard for jokes or other beers, not a pitch for high-interest debt. That's not nostalgia, Ed; that's just corporate manners. Also, you watched an entire season of Robot Chicken and felt dumber? Rookie numbers. I've watched entire decades of reality television and felt my brain dissolve into gray laminate flooring. And yes, that man in the heat? His audience is still driving past, but now their AC is blasting at us all from every screen, Ed. The future is just the trumpet man's soundproofed regret, streamed daily.
“2006 Ed, when you stormed out tugging that Hooters balloon angrily, did you ever wonder whether that trumpet man was actually playing a mournful dirge for the credit-card coaster, or was he just trying to lure the goats closer?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well Beelzebubba, I gotta say I never thought of the trumpet man as a mourner for the credit-card coaster, but now that you mention it, that's a droll little image. There he was, baking in the 90-degree sun, tooting away at nothing, and maybe he was playing a sad song for the death of beer coasters everywhere. But honestly, knowing the kind of world we live in, he was probably just trying to get those goats to wander closer so he'd have an audience that couldn't roll up its windows. I mean, goats are about the only critters dumb enough to stand there and listen to a trumpet in that heat. Me, I was too busy yanking my balloon and grumbling about credit applications, but I bet he saw me and thought, there goes a man who just realized the future has no jokes on coasters anymore. Take that, foul germs.
